Overview / Usage

Overview

Rhome is a first-person, dark, atmospheric exploration game where players navigate an increasingly chaotic and psychologically unnerving environment as the very fabric of reality unravels around them. Step into the role of Hailey Rhome, a distinguished architect, who returns from a long day at work to find her husband missing and her home a hostile and unfamiliar place.

Rhome was developed over a 24-week period by an SMU Guildhall Capstone team of 15 students in collaboration with voice actors from SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts graduate acting program, musicians from Arcella Sound in Mexico, and consulting architects from the Frisco Independent School District’s Career and Technical Education Center.

Team Members:

• Ryan Higgins - Game Designer
• Alaetheia Garrison Stuber Weston Wong - Lead Producer
• Sam Harry - Lead Artist
• Gabby Perretta - Lead Level Designer
• Adam Riley - Lead Programmer
• Andy Graves - Level Designer
• Austin Merritt - Level Designer
• Colin Bekta - Programmer
• Daniel Yang - Artist
• Jason Pavik - Artist
• Shitao Zhou - Programmer
• Thomas Mouchawar - Artist
• Zhefan Mei - Level Designer
• Zhiyu Sun - Artist

Methodology / Approach

Game Design Goals

At its core, Rhome is about the decay of a world: looping rooms, twisted hallways, massive falls, and broken environments.

Before we knew what our actual story was going to be about, we wanted to know what the arc of the world would be and how it alone could serve to reflect what is happening within a character emotionally.

Because of this, in Rhome, we wanted first and foremost the world to feel like a character in of itself, and how it alone could intrigue, frighten, and even drive players.

But Rhome of course tells the story of another character as well, Hailey Rhome, a young woman who must learn and accept that she has recently passed away in a tragic elevator accident. Hailey is the game’s protagonist and as she makes her journey through the 5-stages of grief, both her and the game’s world are meant to tell the same story.

In creating Hailey’s character, we knew immediately that for her to fully convey her emotional state that she would need to be voice acted. For this we collaborated with voice actors from SMU’s Meadows school of the arts graduate acting program to create just over 200 lines of voice over. Because of the linear nature of the game, we were then able to take these and place them on a variety of triggerable events: from look at triggers, to activation triggers, to simple location based triggers – these allowed us bring the character to life in a controllable and designed way throughout the game.

We wanted Hailey’s character to feel real and emotionally reflective of her world, yet not intrusive, which was initially a hard balance to find. Especially towards the middle sections of the game, we realized that less is often more and that just as Hailey needs time to process things, so does the player, and during the moments when Hailey does speak, her few lines come across as that much more powerful.

This is the story we wanted to tell, and we wanted all the game’s many layers to support it. From the surreal puzzles of Rhome, to its industrial and mechanically influenced sound design, and especially to the decay of the very world, we wanted ever aspect of the game to reflect and undertake the same emotional journey as our protagonist.

Level Design Goals

Since the game is largely set in one location, we had to be very intentional on how we changed the known spaces in the house in order to fit both within the story’s progression and the increasingly chaotic nature of the house, while also still being recognizable. There are many instances of this throughout the game, but we'll use the pool room as an example.

The baseline for the pool room is established in Level 1, where the player is guided to explore that area through the placement of the starting position and comments that Hailey makes about an open door. This allows the player to recognize when changes are later made, even when they are subtle, such as in Level 2. The house is still incredibly recognizable; the only real difference at all is the appearance of walls in new and strange places. As such, only the water is removed from the pool.

By the time the player reaches the pool room in Level 3, things are distinctly chaotic. Elevators have appeared, signaling the arrival of new elements that do not fit in with a house. They are strange and foreign. In the pool room, the missing water is suddenly on the ceiling, decorated with candles that are floating upside down on the surface. It is a clear impossibility. The player is no longer in the rational world of physics, just as it is clear that they are no longer inside the house.

Level 4 signals a complete breakdown of the house, and the pool room reflects this. Up until this point, the player was not able to enter the pool. This was an action that nearly every player attempted to take the first time they saw the pool: they wanted to jump in. However, we established very clear rules that players could not enter the pool space, even when there was no water. Level 4 breaks this rule. It is necessary to enter the pool in order toprogress through the level. This signals to the player that they cannot rely onthings that they know and believe are constant, adding to the subconscious unease that they feel.

Art Design Goals

Our goal as an art department was to create the most unique horror experience possible. When we started development, we explored many environment styles but ultimately went with a brutalist modern aesthetic. The houseneeded to be cold, uninviting, and make players feel uneasy. We developed a modern style with a brutalist twist slowly getting more chaotic and aggressive throughout the game.

To add an extra level of realism for our baseline house, we consulted with professional architects in collaboration with the Frisco Independent School District's Career and Technological Center. Throughout the project, they helped us create a house that could exist in the real world that could gradually decay and transform as Hailey descends into her horrific discovery.

This allowed us to create that sense of dread we wanted the players to feel. The modern elements of the architecture were also very simple in terms of 3D geometry and texturing, which really helped us with rapid development; we were a student team with a limited time frame, so this was essential. Our art style ultimately created an unstable world for players to explore while serving as a metaphor for the unraveling of Hailey Rhome’s mind.

Music Design Goals

In designing the music of Rhome, we worked with Arcella Sound in Mexico. Each week we would meet remotely and iterate the musical design as well as the overall musical arc throughout the game. In the early stages, we wanted there to be no music to highlight ambient sound and a diegetic world. As the other layers of the world start to peel back however, we slowly added more and more emphasis to an industrial influenced soundtrack. Sounds of shifting cables, sharp metallic clangs pitted against the low guttural rumblings of machinery – like the rest of the world we wanted to make atmospheric music out of unfamiliar pieces.

Technologies Used

We used Unreal Engine 4 and a standard set of game development tools such as Adobe CC, 3DS Max, Maya, Substance Designer, Mudbox, ZBrush, and a wide range of audio authoring and runtime tools. Intel technologies included a variety of hardware CPUs for QA, compatibility testing, and production support kindly provided by Intel's Academic Program.

Other links

• Rhome - SMU Guildhall Student Work Page
• Rhome - Steam (Free Download)
• The Art of Rhome (Presentation)

Collaborators